


Beyond The Maroon Door

by WisteriaCross



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Creepy Hannibal, Fear of Death, Hannibal Lecter's Office, Temp Agency, Will Graham helps someone, animal - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WisteriaCross/pseuds/WisteriaCross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Beyond the maroon door lies a blue world.<br/>She never enters the lion’s den, what sane gazelle would?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond The Maroon Door

**Author's Note:**

> Set during one of Will's visits to Dr. Lecter's office.  
> From the view point of Lecter's first and last office assistant.  
> Has a slight stream of consciousness feel.

Beyond the maroon door lies a blue world.

She never enters the lion’s den, what sane gazelle would?

She watches animals march in and out, papers fly across her desk like origami doves, phone calls depositing disembodied voices in her ear. Every day until her time is up she sits behind an obstacle of wood. The meager splinter her only defense against the storm that lives beyond rust red doors.

 He never misses her.

She wishes he would.

The door always opens at exactly five past the end hour, and he stands there and watches her leave.

“Goodnight Miss Monroe.” His mouth is full of knives, his eyes empty closets with the doors flung wide open. He is metal and bleached bone, exotic spice dried and crushed. His suits are tailored to perfection, he is everlasting, he is indestructible and he knows it.

“Good Night Dr. Lecter.” Long dormant instincts scream for her to run, shriek and tear themselves in half in her brain. Long trained cultural etiquette forces her to stay for the duration of their dance.

He is not a kind partner.

“How many more days until my files are organized, Miss Monroe?”

 Countdown to dooms day, to explosions and hurt. The question is a drum spinning in the barrel of a pearl handled gun.  The answer has her playing Russian roulette, has her stroking a snake to see if today the bullet bites. Her answer has her striking match after match to see if the gasoline he’s doused her in will this day ignite.  

Seven, six, five, four, three, two one.

In seven days the world was created, in seven days her life will end. No one told her, but she knows. It’s inscribed on the skin where his eyes carved the words, the day she accepted the temporary job as secretary to the indomitable Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He says.

She can mouth the words along with him if she wanted to, but doesn’t. That would be rude, so very rude.

 It’s never nice to be rude… it never ends well to be rude.

She turns and walks away, but you can’t outrun a phantom. He follows her home, settles in her mind, etches himself with bloody strokes on the inside of her eyelids. Never alone, never again, a constant companion that’s waiting for her to trip, the perfect moment for him to pounce.

“Hello.”

She looks up.

 _He_ is new.

She hasn’t seen this animal before. He’s not like the other animals that walk in. She squints, tilts her head, decides he is not an animal at all. He is water, fluid and ever changing.

“Hello.” She answers back. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes.” He smiles. It’s a dead smile, the kind painted on a clown, or etched onto a skull.

He enters the blue world beyond the maroon doors, that dead smile bleeding off his face.

When he leaves he's removed his glasses. He stops turns and looks at her long and hard before leaning forward over her desk, so his lips almost graze her ear. “Don’t come in tomorrow.” He breathes.

She doesn’t.

She lives.

She wonders what would have happened if she’d gone in on the seventh day. If that man hadn’t shown up on the sixth day and disrupted Dr. Lecter in such a monumental way that he, for the first time since the temp agency sent her, did not bid her good bye before she left.

She’ll never know.

And the gazelle races away free, saved, by a running river that was interesting enough to distract the prowling lion.

 

**Author's Note:**

> All grammatical errors are mine.


End file.
